“It’s okay. The doctor said she’s going to be all right.” I turned, startled, to the corner, where a young woman rose from a chair. “I’m Edie Michaels,” she said, proffering her hand.
“The roommate,” I answered, putting the name to the face.
“Well, one of them.”
“I’m Rachel Benjamin. From Winslow, Brown.”
“Oh, sure. You had dinner with Sara last night.”
“Yes. So what happened?”
Edie sank back into the chair, running a hand through her mass of curly black hair. Her big dark eyes were worried in her olive-skinned face. “Well, you know how Sara rows every morning?”
I nodded, perching myself on the second, unoccupied bed. “We were just talking about it.” The previous evening suddenly seemed very far away.
“Apparently, she did her workout, and she was putting her scull away when somebody hit her over the head with an oar. A homeless man saw the whole thing-he’d come in to use the bathroom in the boathouse.”
“Did they catch the guy who did it?”
“No, he ran out when he realized he’d been seen. And the homeless guy was too busy checking that Sara was all right to follow him. He’s the one who called the ambulance and the police. All he saw was somebody wearing a ski mask and a big coat with a hood-it was still pretty dark out, and he wasn’t even sure if it was a man or woman.”
“And what did the doctors say?” I asked anxiously.
“They think she’s going to be fine. She has a bad cut on her scalp, and she had to have stitches. They did X-rays and everything, and there’s some swelling, and they said she might have a slight concussion, but they didn’t think too much damage had been done. She was conscious when they brought her in, but she didn’t remember seeing anyone. They gave her a sedative after the stitches, and it knocked her right out.”
“So she really was attacked,” I said in disbelief.
“I know. I can’t imagine who would have done such a thing. It’s so…gritty.”
“Maybe it was a vagrant of some sort? Maybe she surprised somebody who was hiding out there?” There was a pretty sizable and less than mentally stable homeless population in Harvard Square, and I could easily imagine one of them using the boathouse as a temporary shelter and freaking out that his space had been invaded.
Edie shook her head. “I thought that, too, at first. But I’ve been sitting here, trying to figure it out, and I don’t think that makes sense.”
“Why not?”
“If somebody were hiding out there, she would have surprised him when she went into the boathouse in the first place, to get her scull. And if he were going to attack her, why wouldn’t he have attacked her then? But she was attacked when she was leaving.”
“Sort of like someone was waiting for her when she came back from her row?”
“Exactly. Especially when you think about the ski mask. I mean, what sort of random attacker would come equipped with a mask? That sort of thing just screams premeditation.” I recalled Sara mentioning that Edie planned on finding a job in entertainment, and going by her dramatic choice of words, it seemed that she would be well-suited to it.
“And you’re sure it wasn’t the guy who said he witnessed the entire thing?”
“I don’t think so. George, the homeless man, is sort of a fixture around Harvard Square. There’s a shelter at the University Lutheran Church, and both Sara and I have volunteered there. He knew Sara and had talked to her-I mean, it’s not like he’s the most sane person you’ll ever meet-in fact, he’s a total nutcase-but he has no history of violence. If he’d run into Sara, he would have just tried to engage her in conversation of some sort. He thinks he’s a real intellectual, and he’s always trying to debate philosophy or literary theory or whatever with students. He wouldn’t hurt anyone. Bore them to death, maybe, but that’s as bad as he gets.”
“That’s funny. I think I might remember him from my college days.” I hazily recalled a shabby man who would sit in on my English lectures, occasionally posing an interesting and clearly well-informed question.
“Yeah. He’s a bit of a legend around here. Anyhow, the hospital called our room, and I picked up the call and came right over.”
“So it probably wasn’t George.”
“No. I’d be really surprised if it were.”
“Then I wonder who. And why.”
Edie was quiet for a moment. I had the sense that she was taking my measure, wondering if she could confide in me.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” I asked.
She nodded. “Look, I feel sort of uncomfortable talking about this, but I know that Sara trusts you. And looks up to you.”
The idea of anyone viewing me as a role model was a bizarre one, and coming so soon after being ma’amed, it made me wonder if the time had come to ask my doctor about Botox. “Well, I don’t know about the looking up part, but she can definitely trust me. And you can, too.”
“Okay.” She seemed to make up her mind. “Sara’s been getting these strange letters.”
“Letters?”
“Yes. Like love letters, but sort of sinister. I mean, they’re all flowery and gushy and go on and on about how beautiful she is. But they’re never signed, and there’s no return address or even a stamp or postmark on the envelopes, and they show up in the weirdest places-not just her mailbox at school, but slipped into her bag or a notebook. She once even found one on her bed.”
“Creepy,” I said.
“And invasive. I mean, the letters seem harmless enough-really badly written, but harmless. But when they show up in her personal space, it’s really disturbing. I know it sounds like a cliché, but it’s like she’s being stalked.”
“Does she have any idea who might be sending them?”
“No. Not a clue. We’ve been over and over it, but we just can’t come up with any likely suspects. It would be hard to imagine any of the guys at school writing anything like them, much less giving them to her.”
“But it must be someone who has access to the school-otherwise, how could he get the letters to her? How could he get into your dorm?”
“Well, it’s not like security is that tight. Anyone who looked like he could belong on campus could probably walk around without too much difficulty. And people are always letting people into the dorm, even though they shouldn’t.”
“What about Grant Crocker?” I asked, remembering the odd, proprietary way in which he’d spoken of Sara earlier that morning.
“Sara told you about Grant?”
“Yes. And I knew him from when he worked at Winslow, Brown. He was at the memorial service this morning, and he was asking me if I had seen Sara.” It would be a great way to deflect suspicion from himself, I thought-acting like he was perplexed not to see her at the church, even if he knew exactly why she wasn’t there. My distaste for him made me more than willing to cast him as a creepy violent stalker.
“We talked about it maybe being Grant, but it’s hard to picture. If you could see the letters-they’re not a Grant Crocker type production. I mean, he’s an ex-marine and a fanatical weight lifter-he even takes those weird supplements that build muscle or whatever. But this stuff is really lovey-dovey, and also sort of pretentious with all of these esoteric quotes from various poets. We just couldn’t imagine that Grant had it in him. He’s been a total pain since Sara broke things off with him-he still calls all the time. In fact, he called last night when you guys were having dinner, and he practically had a jealous fit on the phone. But these letters-they’re just not his style.”
“Do the police know about the letters? Did you tell anyone about them? Did Sara?”
“Actually, she did. Just yesterday. I’d been urging her to go to campus security, but she was worried that she’d be overreacting. And the letters weren’t threatening, really, except for being anonymous and showing up in strange places. So she decided to show them to her section leader and get his advice.”